National Life and Accident Insurance Company

The National Life and Accident Insurance Company is a former life insurance company which was based in Nashville, Tennessee.

National Life and Accident began in 1900 as the National Sick and Accident Association, a mutual company. It was reorganized as a company and adopted the National Life name shortly thereafter.

In the early years, the company's business consisted primarily of low-premium, low-benefit "sick and accident" policies, which is a form of disability insurance that paid the owner a stated amount for every week he was unable to work due to illness or injury. To prevent fraud, it was necessary for the amount of the benefit to be somewhat less than what the insured earned through regular employment. The vast majority of these policies, especially in the early years, were sold on the "debit system" (also called "home service insurance"), meaning that an insurance agent employed by the company, usually the one responsible for selling the policy initially, made periodic visits to the clients home to collect the premium (and, generally, to sell or attempt to sell more insurance). The frequency of these visits varied but was usually (especially in the early years) weekly; in later years, more of the collection visits were on a biweekly or monthly basis.

The company soon expanded into "industrial life insurance," so called because it was generally aimed at industrial workers, which was also sold on the debit system, and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, which rather than a weekly income paid a stated, fixed amount, if the insured died by accident or lost sight or use of an eye or a limb. The industrial life insurance plans were usually for small face amounts: typically $250, $500, or $1,000 in the early year. They featured double indemnity for accidental loss of life, which could be triple indemnity or even more if death occurred as the result of an accident on a public conveyance. (For this reason these plans were often derided by their detractors as "streetcar insurance.")

The company gradually expanded its operations to the southern eastern seaboard and eventually covered most of the continental U.S. except for the northeastern states, the Rocky Mountain states, and the Pacific Northwest. It also began to write "ordinary life" insurance to better risks, such as middle class office workers, religious ministers, accountants, bankers, and similar persons.

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